Be with Me

Nine

I didn’t think I heard him right at first. I had to have heard something other than what he said, because there was no way Jack was his son. Jack was his brother.

But as I stared at him and took in the paleness of his face and the clarity of his gray eyes, I knew that what he’d spoken was something so rare, so unknown to probably almost anyone, that it was the truth.

I shook my head, dumbfounded. “Jack’s your son?”

Jase held my gaze a moment longer and then focused ahead. Several seconds passed before he spoke. “Shit. I . . . no one knows that, Tess. My parents do. Cam does, but he would never say anything. No one else knows.”

Unsurprised that Cam knew this about Jase, I was still a little shocked that he hadn’t told me. Then again, it had never been my business.

I really didn’t know how to process this as I stared at him. My thoughts raced. Jack and Jase did look an awful lot alike, but so did brothers. Jase was superclose with Jack, seeming to have a two-way bond with the boy, but so did a lot of brothers. Jase seemed to put Jack before a lot of things, but brothers did that.

But they weren’t brothers.

They were father and son.

Holy shit.

Lots of things suddenly made sense. Besides how he acted around Jack, there was our conversation earlier. How he seemed to know firsthand that some of the best things in life weren’t planned. And it probably explained why he no longer played soccer or had any plans of taking a job after college that would force him to move away. He wanted to be here with his son, no matter the status between them. It also explained why he didn’t keep girls around, because he did have a kid, and even if he wasn’t actively raising that child, he could be one day. And that was a lot to dump on a girl. I could get that. I was pretty shell-shocked.

Jase was a dad.

He was most definitely a FILF—a father I’d like to fuck.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Oh my God, I couldn’t believe I just thought that. But he was a dad.

The air leaked out of me, and then I swallowed hard as he reached over, plucking something—a piece of hay—out of my hair. He twirled it between his fingers as I gawked at him. “Does . . . does he know?”

Jase shook his head. “No. He thinks his grandparents are his parents.”

“Why?” I asked the question before I could rethink how intrusive it was. God, that was rude of me. But I wanted to know. I needed to know how Jase, someone who clearly loved that little boy more than life, was letting someone else raise him.

“It’s a mess,” he answered, leaning back in the seat. He rubbed his hand down his face and sighed. “They’ve raised him since birth as their own. Even adopted him. That makes me sound like shit, doesn’t it?” He tilted his head toward me, and pain filled his eyes, causing my chest to clench. “I’m not even raising my own son. My fucking parents are and he doesn’t even know. That makes me so attractive, doesn’t it?”

I blinked rapidly, my mouth hung open, and I had no idea what to say to that.

He laughed harshly as he tipped his head back against the seat. Tension seeped out of his shoulders. “I’m not raising my own kid,” he repeated, and I knew right off that was something he said to himself quite often. “For five years, my parents have raised him. I want to change that, but I can’t take back those years, and how do I change that now? Telling him could fucking destroy his world and I don’t want to do that. It would also break my parents’ hearts, because they think of him as their own.” His eyes closed. “I’m a damn deadbeat dad.”

Jase laughed humorlessly again, and I sat up straighter. “You are not a deadbeat.”

“Oh, come on.” A self-degrading smile appeared. “I just told you I have a kid. I’m almost twenty-two years old and I have a five-year-old that my parents are raising. Do the math, Tess. I was sixteen when he was conceived. Sixteen. Still in high school. Obviously that’s not something to be proud of.”

“Is it something you’re ashamed of?”

His gaze sharpened on me and he seemed to toss around that question. “No,” he said quietly. “I’m not ashamed of Jack. I’ll never be. But I am ashamed of the fact that I’m not owning up to my responsibility and being his father.”

I bit down on my lip, wanting to ask so many questions as a truck blew past the entrance road. “So you were sixteen when he was conceived? You were just a kid, right? Just like I was a kid when I was with Jeremy.”

“That’s different.” He closed his eyes. “That doesn’t excuse anything on my end.”

“How many sixteen-year-olds do you know that could be a parent?” I demanded.

“There are many who are.”

“So? That doesn’t mean that every sixteen-year-old is equipped and ready for that. I sure as hell wouldn’t have been. And my parents would’ve helped me out.” I paused, realizing like an idiot that it takes two people to make a baby the last time I checked. “You also weren’t the only person responsible. There had to have been a mom. Where is—?”

“I’m not talking about her,” he said sharply, and I flinched at his tone. “None of this has to do with her at all.”

Whoa. There was definitely some baby mama drama right there.

“And helping isn’t the same thing as adopting.” His eyes opened into thin slits. “When I told my parents what was going on, they were upset, but they wanted me to finish school, go to college and keep playing soccer. They didn’t want me to give all that up.”

“I don’t blame them,” I said softly. But what about the mother?

“So it was either that or give Jack up for adoption, because I wasn’t ready. As fucked up as this sounds, I didn’t want him at first. I didn’t want anything to do with him; before he was even born or I even laid eyes on him, I gave him up in a way . . .” His voice grew thick and he cleared his throat. It was obvious that whoever the mom was, she was out of the picture the moment Jack was born, and I was dying to know why. “So they filed for adoption and it was granted. Looking back, I realize how fucking selfish I was. I should’ve owned up then, but I didn’t ,and there is nothing I can do to change that right now.”

“But you are a part of his life, Jase. And I can tell that you wish you had done things differently and isn’t that what matters most? That you love him nonetheless?”

Jase tipped his head back again and blew out a breath. “I love him more than life, but it doesn’t excuse the decisions I’ve made.”

Anger smoked its way through me, and I forgot about the mom thing. “You just told me not too long ago that I was too young when I was sixteen—that I couldn’t hold myself responsible for keeping quiet and not telling anyone about Jeremy. My age and general naïveté gives me a pass but not you?”

He opened his mouth.

“Does it? If so, that’s not fair and is seriously subjective in all the wrong ways.” On a roll now, I wasn’t shutting up anytime soon. “You can’t tell me that I need to let go of decisions and actions of the past when you refuse to do the very same!”

Jase drew back against the car seat, throat working as if he searched for the right thing to say but had trouble. “Well, shit. You got me there.”

“Hells yeah, I do.”

His lips tipped up at the corner, but his eyes were somber. “You . . . you don’t need all of this.” He turned thundercloud eyes on me. “You’re young and you have all your life ahead of you.”

I raised my brows. “What the hell does that have anything to do with anything? I care about you, Jase. A lot. Okay? And I want to be with you.” My cheeks burned, but I kept going. “That’s obvious, but you’re making choices and getting things all twisted up in your head without even asking me or seeing how I feel about it.”

“And how do you feel about it, Tess?” The line of his jaw hardened as his eyes flashed a heated gray. “You really want to be with me now? After knowing all that? And you think it’s smart for you and me to get involved? What if we do? And what if you get close to Jack?”

I folded my hands against my chest. “Why wouldn’t you want me to get close to him? I thought you said I’d be—”

“You are planning on leaving, Tess. You aren’t thinking about sticking around. And I’ll be damned if that boy gets hurt just because you want to get laid.”

I jerked back, flinching. Tears crawled up my throat and burned behind my eyes. Was that what he really thought? After all I’d said? After everything he’d said and done for me? That he summed everything up in me wanting to get laid?

Knowing that’s how he really thought of me stung worse than rejection.

“You know something, Jase?” My voice wavered, but I forged on. “The fact you have a kid who is being raised by your parents or that you won’t even breathe the mother’s name isn’t what would push me away or make me think differently of you. It’s the way you act and how you make such fucked-up assumptions that does that.”